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SA digital agencies make their mark in MMA’s first Business Impact Index

16 April 2018 - 10:46
Lynette Dicey

Picture: 123RF/STUDIOM1

Four SA digital agencies – Digitas Liquorice, Yonder Media, Gloo@Ogilvy and Gorilla – have been placed in the top 10 of the EMEA Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA’s) inaugural Smarties Business Impact Index, while Digitas Liquorice and Yonder Media were ranked numbers 2 and 3 in the global index’s ranking.

Gloo@Ogilvy came in at 10th position globally and in third position in EMEA, while Gorilla came in 11th overall globally and fourth in EMEA.

The MMA’s Business Impact Index (BII) identifies and ranks agencies (media, creative and specialist), holding companies, agency networks, advertisers, brands and technology enablers, who, through their campaigns and mobile activities, are having the biggest business impact in their organisations, their country, the African continent and around the world.

The index is based on the methodology of the World Advertising Research Centre, the global authority on advertising and media effectiveness. It analyses the finalist and award-winning campaigns from the prior year’s Smarties Awards competitions that occurred across eight countries, in four regions and in the global competition in 2017.

“This is a significant achievement for SA digital agencies and a testament to their ability to grow their clients’ business models through mobile. They have performed exceedingly well against their peers, outperforming most of the global players, highlighting that SA agencies are as well developed in mobile as their global counterparts. This despite the perception that these countries are further along the development curve when it comes to mobile,” says Sarah Utermark, country director of MMA SA.

The big take-out

Three SA digital agencies – Digitas Liquorice, Yonder Media and Gloo@Ogilvy – have been ranked in the top 10 agencies globally in the inaugural Mobile Marketing Association Smarties Business Impact Index.

SA brands also fared well in the BII’s global category: Yum! Brands were ranked number 4 and Distell Group number 25 (out of nearly 200 advertisers). In the brands global category Shoprite is first, and KFC was ranked number 24 and Amarula number 25. This is out of 270 brands.

Digitas Liquorice CEO Miles Murphy said it was an honour to be recognised on both the global and the local stage, particularly when it’s by an organisation as prestigious and renowned as the MMA. Of the agency’s campaigns entered in the 2017 Smarties, he said, Amarula’s #NameThemSaveThem raised awareness of elephant poaching, reaching 15m people and names being given to all 400,000 of the elephants.

For SA Homeloans House Rules, the agency created a series of hilarious short videos that an audience that was not looking for a home or did not feel in the mood for serious financial talk would want to watch, and generated potential leads of up to R4.8bn.

“These SA brands and digital agencies have a lot to be proud of, and they demonstrate the level of expertise the country possess. The MMA SA congratulates all the winners,” concludes Utermark.